Two People = SIX Phone Lines???

A Tale of Two Three Cities...


Man I have to tell you, I'm worn out mentally and now physically because in the middle of all of the other stuff going on around here I just got through dragging a heavy duty 100' extension cord and my hammer drill with a 15" long concrete bit on it around two sides of my house in the snow and ice.

"Why would you be doing THAT...Mr. Rogers?" most sane people might inquire?

Because the idiots at AT&T jerked us around since Wednesday waiting for them to send a so-called "technician" out to install Pat's new business phone line, and after the 8 AM appointment deadline passed we found that all they really needed to do was throw a switch at NASA or in Washington DC or maybe at the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia and we'd have a dial tone.

Earlier this morning I walked outside with an old trimline phone in my hand, plugged it into the "network interface", and found that they'd turned the stupid thing on quite by accident.

So any way, all complaining about Utility companies aside, did I mention that with Pat's new company supplied land line and cell phone that we have...

Get ready...

SIX TELEPHONE LINES FOR TWO PEOPLE (and ONE TURBO PUP who doesn't have thumbs and doesn't dial the phone very often.)

I know, I know I KNOW...maybe an explanation is in order so I can get all of this straight myself, and in the process see if I can rationalize paring things down a little because I think that there's an itty bitty chance that we're spending WayyyyYYYY too much money taking unsolicited offers of insurance and debt consolidation and God knows what else these days on all of these communication devices.

First of all there's MY cell phone, something I've had in various incarnations since about 1990 before every man woman and infant on the entire planet had one and felt the need to walk and drive around blabbing all day.

It currently has our old home number from Vinings, Georgia ported over to it so bill collectors people we knew in the Atlanta area could find us when we moved to St. Simons. It's a 404 area code which constantly confuses people when they call and I say I live in Knoxville.

Then there is our home phone, which is actually a Vonage VOiP phone and phone number that we got when we lived on St. Simons. The wierd thing was that while south Georgia has a 912 area code, that it wasn't available on VOiP so Vonage gave us another 404 Area Code. In the process we eliminated AT&T/Bell South from our lives in regard to land lines and telecommunications as of 2003.

Next there's Pat's cell phone, which has her old Atlanta era cell phone number which we never changed as we moved from city to city and from Bellsouth/Cingular to T-Mobile and now to Verizon.

Confused yet?

Well, I actually am, because with speed dial, since I never actually DIAL any of our numbers I can only remember one of them most of the time without bursting a blood vessel thinking about it.

Next comes along my new company, and in the interest of trying to look like a real business enterprise I decided that it would be nice if when my customers called me here in Knoxville they actually called a Knoxville number, and when my suppliers here in town called they didn't have to call long distances soooooo...

Along comes phone number number FOUR.

We bounced along quite comfortably from October to this week running around the house playing hide and seek with the EIGHT WIRELESS HANDSETS answering FOUR TELEPHONE NUMBERS...

looking in sofa cushions and under the bed sheets and in other out of the way places when something started making noise or we actually wanted to of all things place a phone call.

For some reason there must be a law or a rule or something that says that no matter how many phones you have there is never one closer than 25 feet through at least two pieces of Sheetrock from you when it rings or you want to call and talk to someone or order Pizza.

All of that rambling aside, it brings us to this week when Pat finished her paper work and the last hour when I went out and drilled a hole through 12" of brick and concrete block and 2x4's and poked a wire through the wall (the old wiring was 46 years old and I didn't want to fool with making it work.)

So now we have our third dial tone in the building, the first associated with a "land line" in almost seven years, and with this week's experience I can tell you that the legacy phone companies' customer service is still operating in a "Monopoly mentality" and it's no wonder people continue to eliminate "Ma Bell" or whatever incarnation they call themselves from their lives.

And then finally, with the arrival of the package containing the new Cell phone any day now, I'm fairly certain that I'm going to literally DROWN in A SEA OF DIAL TONES AND DIFFERENT RINGS.

Six phone lines and ten phones.

I must be out of my freaking mind.

Would somebody PLEASE wrap a phone cord around my neck and put me out of my suffering???

And don't write, CALL...operators are standing by....